5 – Planetary Transits

Professor Bailyn talks about student responses for a paper assignment on the controversy over Pluto. The central question is whether the popular debate is indeed a “scientific controversy.” A number of scientific “fables” are discussed and a moral is associated with each: the demotion of Pluto (moral: science can be affected by culture); the discovery of 51 Peg b (morals: expect the unexpected, and look at your data); the disproof of pulsation as explanation for the Velocity Curves (moral: sometimes science works like science).